A Crime Through Time

Amelia Blackwell

IF you’re looking for the perfect holiday reading ‘companion’ this summer, the delectable Miss Georgiana Darcy could be just the person you need to bring a large helping of time-travelling mystery, laugh-out-loud fun and heart-fluttering romance.

While the literary world was preparing to celebrate this year’s 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, Cornwall-based Amelia Blackwell (pictured below) was busy penning her own tribute to the beloved English author with a debut cosy crime series starring a young woman best known as the naïve young sister of Pride and Prejudice’s swoonworthy hero Fitzwilliam Darcy.

And A Crime Through Time – the first book of Blackwell’s Miss Darcy Investigates series – proves to be an engrossing, quirky and original Austen-esque romp as the shy and meek Georgiana is transported backwards and forwards through time and space from Pemberley in 1799 to the spectacular real-life Georgian mansion, Saltram House in Devon, in 1995 where a film crew is shooting the latest Jane Austen adaptation.

So sit back and prepare for a time-travelling delight as we witness 20-year-old Georgiana reckoning with not just the misunderstandings and mysteries of life, language (and love!) in the late 20^th century but also a shocking murder… and some unexpected dramas brewing back home at Pemberley.

At the imposing Derbyshire home of Fitzwilliam Darcy Esquire, his sister Georgiana – whose unfortunate naivete led to her being almost seduced by the wicked Mr George Wickham – is desperate to escape an unwanted marriage proposal from the aged Baron John de Halighwell, a man to whom she can only be ‘as civil as his bad breath would allow.’ As is her wont, she retreats to Pemberley’s woodlands, the ancient place ‘where magic might happen’ and where she can ‘breathe’ and be alone. But after hearing a strange, discordant ‘shriek,’ Georgiana discovers a mysterious object with the word ‘MOTOROLA’ on it and when she presses a glowing red circle, she finds herself transported almost two hundred years into the future and on to the lawn in front of a grand country mansion.

This is Saltram House in Devon where a crew are busy shooting a new Jane Austen film and the cast are wearing clothes not unlike Georgiana’s own. But she also stumbles across a terrible crime and the impeccably mannered Miss Darcy – newly arrived and thoroughly confused – would appear to be the only witness.

It soon becomes clear that, somehow, Georgiana was meant to solve this riddle. Seized by a powerful desire to dig out the truth and helped by a border collie named Watson and an Irish security guard named Quinn, a man ‘with an exceptionally pleasing countenance,’ she sets out to stop the killer before they can strike again. But as Georgiana moves back between the present and future, there are serious problems at Pemberley where pregnant Elizabeth’s condition is causing concern. And time, it seems, is not on her side…

This happy collision of crime, time travel and Jane Austen delivers an intriguing murder mystery while allowing readers a fresh and fun perspective on their favourite Pride and Prejudice characters and an entertaining speculation on what life might have looked like for the iconic cast in the months after events in the book. Much of the comedy element comes from Georgiana’s 18^th century upper-class sensibilities and societal restrictions encountering the prosaic, totally unbuttoned and uncensored world and words of 1995… all alongside the often bewildering goings-on of a busy film set.

As we witness Georgiana’s slow metamorphosis from shy ingénue to determined and daring young woman, and enjoy the blossoming of her romance with handsome, down-to-earth security guard Quinn, she must also apply herself to catching a killer, and cope with emotional dilemmas in both timelines.

Blackwell’s depth of research, her allusions to the great author’s life and works, and her joyful love all things Austen, shine through in this time-travelling odyssey which heralds the start of another winning cosy crime series…this time with a delicious Regency flavour.
(Macmillan, hardback, £18.99)